#travel #study
Watts Atelier Boot Camp 2016 - Part 2

"Enter the dragon ride..."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

BY ANTHONY ROSS

I arrived in San Diego two days early before starting the Boot Camp at 10:00 am on Monday.  They have one of the most dangerous airports in the world, I was told on the plane ride there. It has a very short run way that's difficult to land and take off from. The planes come in to land in the center of downtown, being as high as a two story building near the end of their descent.  As I shuttled to my hotel, I saw just how close they were.  Nearly as low as a lamp post.  The whole city is built around this airport.

It was really nice arriving this early, because it gave me enough time to see some of San Diego and get settled before the course began.  As you'll see, the Boot Camp aspect of the course was prevalent, and it was a lot of drawing and painting every day, without room for much else. Of course, that's not a complaint.  By the end of these two days before the course started, I was very inspired to start working with my newsprint paper.  More on that later.

On arrival, I did the ordinary things such as get groceries for the week and find the school.  When I walked over to the school, a 5-10 minute walk away, they were starting a class, waiting for the teachers to show up.  At this time, I saw Erik and Meadow teaching drawing and painting, both on each side of the Watts Atelier, which is divided like this.

Easels on one side of the room in a semi circle facing the stage.
Drawing benches on the other side in the same fashion.  Each divided by a short wall that you can walk around to get from one side to the other.  The school was smaller than I imagined, but didn't need to be any bigger than it was.  They used to have another room that you'd access by going out the back of the building, but it was never in much use when they had it anyway.

On the walls were many framed images, which they would circulate out every few months for new ones.  Most of the pictures were pieces done by artists who got to a really high level of proficiency at the school.  Others were by masters of the craft that Jeff had often met personally.  I took pictures of all of these for study reference in the first couple days before the Boot camp.  Here are a few.  Many more of the same caliber can be seen on the Watts Atelier Tumblr site.

I met some of the artists doing the Summer term and some who have been studying there for even longer.  It was nice to connect with them and a change to be around people studying in the same fashion as I had been with the online course.  We went to a movie, restaurant, to get ice cream and walked around the town of Encinitas, talking mostly about art.  Some of them took the Boot Camp with me, but most didn't.

The next day I rented a bike and used it well, going to a local Farmers' Market.  Later, I would find out that I biked passed Jeff's personal studio on the way there.  I also biked to the next town over and visited the gardens of the Self Realization Fellowship, seen below.

The following day I returned the bike and took a bus to Lego Land.  Not having checked out the prices before arriving, I was a little surprised, but payed the $95.00 to visit one of two attractions like this in the world.  Ultimately, I think Lego Land could do a lot better. Lego is an interactive toy, and there was very little interactivity.  Some recommendations would be to incorporate what the rides offer into the walk around areas.  Enter the dragon ride, and you'll see dark caves with goblins and moving dragon Lego heads.  Why not have that same design in an area where you can get more out of seeing it and not pass by it in a few seconds?  The sections with large cities and replicas of real life buildings are well done, but lack the charm that kids would bring if they could play with it.  It reminds me the Lego Movie and how Will Ferrell had DO NOT TOUCH signs everywhere.  The art itself was cool in certain respects, but also could use a touch of diversity in the way it's put together and how it's presented.

Ultimately, there is more to be said here, but I was disappointed. There wasn't even a professional Lego builder building something for people to watch.  It was a large money grab, and mainly for parents to bring their kids, though not made for the kids real interactive soul-enriching play.  After leaving Lego Land, I had a clear understanding of what my trip was for and why I had come all the way here to the Watts Atelier.  The mastery of representational art, as Watts teaches, is not a quick fix.  It is not some high stimulus novelty.  Learning this craft of drawing and painting is work of character, building patience and perseverance as well as earned and substantial rewards, instead of fleeting and less developed ones. Lego Land was a pointer back to the fun stuff that reaches the depths of what life is all about, back to my newsprint paper and charcoal pencils.

#travel #study
Watts Atelier Boot Camp 2016 - Part 1

"When the ideas in your brain start coming out better on paper and canvas than they were in your head, something changes." - Jeffrey R. Watts
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

BY ANTHONY ROSS

In April of this year I signed up for a month of the online Watts Atelier courses.  It was about six months to a year before that when I first listened to the talk Jeffrey R. Watts gives in this video: How to Train to Become a Successful Working Artist.  The video covers the basic fundamentals of what Jeff Watts, founder of Watts Atelier, has understood from 25-30 years of teaching and training to be a professional artist from a very young age, tapping into all genres and a large variety of industry jobs.  After I listened to this, now multiple times, I was very inspired to pursue the excellency in this craft, to fall in love with improving and working to get better and to work as an artist in the kind of way that I've always dreamed of.  In other words, I was inspired to get intuitive in my craft by doing hours of visual memorizing through drawing and painting.

I was taking Schoolism classes and had been inspired by Bobby Chiu and the other artists on this site.  I had gone to a Schoolism workshop in Vancouver before knowing what Watts Atelier was and began to draw more with a better understanding of what to work on to get better.  It was very inspiring and it lead me to taking Schoolism online classes, which I'm still taking, because they are great lessons and affordable.  That being said, it wasn't until Jeff Watts's articulate speech on what it takes to be professional that I really felt the inspiration to promise myself that I will work hard to get there.  The words, "When the ideas in your brain start coming out better on paper and canvas than they were in your head," struck a cord in me.  That's the stuff that I want to get to.  Jeff's philosophy, articulation and approach to learning the craft lead me to signing up for the Watts courses.  That was in April 2016.

Not long after, I signed up for the boot camp, as a self-motivating trick to get myself to draw more, to be ready for the boot camp.  I began to draw more than I ever had before, working in the charcoal pencil technique that Watts instructs.  It was a style of drawing that I resonated with very much.  I also came to know that most of my life I was only dabbling in art.  Never had I studied how to draw a hand and learned it inside out so I could draw it intuitively.  Rather, I had only drawn 50 or so in my whole life.  I looked through all my drawings and this was the case.  More and more I was overwhelmed by the amount of practice there needed to be done to get to where Jeff was pointing.  And yet having Jeff as a coach through each lesson was continually motivating, as he commented on all the sides of what I was observing as I started to become more serious and focused with my practice.

As it came closer to the course, I had talked to Jeff a few times on the phone and I was very excited for being able to talk about more philosophical things when we met.  Also, it dawned on me that I had never had a really good artist draw over my work to help me understand how to make it better.  It was extremely humbling as I continued to practice and understand just how much Jeff and the other teachers of Watts Atelier must have practiced to get to where they are.  Representational art is hard, there is no question about it. Gradually, I could feel the momentum of getting better, of practicing and of understanding how to go about practicing.

From listening to Jeff, I understood that eight days is not much time for learning art, but it would be a time to get some better understanding of where I was at in terms of being intuitive and consistent with my craft and how to continue practicing with intelligence.  That is exactly what it was, and so much more.

#philosophy

"For the love of wisdom...  Why people do these things."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

BY ANTHONY ROSS

While doing Vipassana today, I came up with a comparison between this mental practice and the teachings of Abraham Hicks that I would like to share.

Abraham's teachings rest on three main components.
1) An intention.
2) The manifested intention.
3) Receiving this manifested intention.

She uses different words to explain these three steps, through many contextual talks and conversations, but for simplicity's sake, that's what I've labeled them as.

An intention simply means a wish.  If your intention is to be happy, that is your wish.  If your intention is to get something that you think will make you happy, then that is your wish.  Intentions come in many forms and most forms come with some form of contrast.  She talks a lot about this.  When something unwanted happens, you generally launch an intention of something wanted to happen.  When something wanted happens, you launch an intention of wanting more things like it to happen.  So you can ultimately, be joyous and live a fulfilled life.  That is most people's ultimate wish.

Number two is the understanding that what you've intended already exists.  At this step, it is just the knowledge of it, and not the experience.  Number three is the experience of number two.  Though, each step kind of happens altogether-at-once.  When you have an intention (1), the universe actualizes it (2), and then you have to match its actualization to experience it (3).

How do you meet your actualized manifestation?  Well, Abraham speaks of the emotional guidance system.  Each one of us has our emotions as guidance to let us know if we are on the path of resistance or on the path of receiving what we've put in place with our intentions.  Step two is the universe's way of granting us our wishes.  When we have an intention, it is done.  Step two only occurs as a 'coming into' our manifested intention.

When we are resisting, we won't ever get to step three.  We will constantly be pulling the strings of our intentions, never coming to see the reality of them and experience them.  This is where I want to bring in Vipassana.  Vipassana isn't about intentions.  It's about seeing what is already there.  As I said above, these three steps of the Law of Attraction are all actually happening together.  It's not that you do one step and move on to the next, but they intertwine, as one constitutes the others.

We have all this contextual 'stuff' from our lives that is ready to be experienced.  Once we have equanimity, then our intentions are clearer and the manifestation of what intentions we had is upon us.  Additionally, the things you want aren't the things you want.  The feeling from those things is what you want.  Abraham has said this to her audiences, and it reflects this experience of equanimity.

Equanimity means having balance.  In Vipassana, you maintain balance not with thoughts or objects, but with the sensations that are experienced on the body.  The theory behind this is that these are at the root of your reactions.  In other words, your intention starts there.  After all, any intention you have starts from where you are.  With no observation of where you are, at the depth, all your intentions will lead you astray, even if they are manifested. Sometimes people go so far astray with outward manifestations that they find their way, but that is the long and difficult route to equanimity.  Having balance means that the ultimate goal that is most intended for, true happiness, can exist at any time, regardless of what reality has manifested itself.  The point of dealing with sensations and having equanimity with those is that that is the first reality that comes to be and everything stems from that.

Therefore, in my personal experience, Vipassana includes and clarifies each step within the Law of Attraction system.  Both the law of nature (Dhamma), and the Law of Attraction are universal laws.  They exist within everyone, everywhere.  To have a greater understanding of them proves to be beneficial, since they are there regardless of our ignorance, working consistently.  To develop equanimity of the changing body sensations will paradoxically skip the need for manifesting anything, and enhance the way this system functions.

Step one will be clearer, by being more in touch with the depth of the mind/body experience, so the intentions will have more heart at the base of them.  Step two will be easily recognized with a greater balance of change and the manifested reality will be received with ease when it is not pressed upon to be seen.  The whole process, with the base of wholesome equanimity, provides greater freedom and true happiness.  Thus, the ultimate goal, with every step.

#photo #travel

"Which is... Which is... The reason... Why people do things."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

BY ANTHONY ROSS

Earlier this month, we went down to Vancouver and took these photos along the way.  My camera is a Canon Rebel t3i and I shot these using the monochrome setting.  They depict the mountainous mountains that are experienced through the drive.

#organize #read #resource

"But what I couldn't figure out was, what was the connection between this long corridor and Marcel Proust?"
- Haruki Murakami / Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

BY ANTHONY ROSS

In April, I invested in WorkFlowy Pro. WorkFlowy is as they say, a notebook for lists.  It's free, but I needed more space, so I went pro. 

So far, playing with it for these last two months with the determination that 'I've paid for it and will find the best way to use it,' has shown true promise.  For personal documentation, or, to quote myself, "documenting the creative life," it is better than whiteboards, large paper calendars, Google docs, Evernote and other ways that I've attempted to keep track of things in the past.

I am currently using it as a daily log, with bullet points of what happens each day, which I can reflect on later and remember the details that happened along with each event.  Something like this:

• Made smoothie
• Did dishes
• Started Master Study of Matt Smith art
• Watched Jeff Watts Master Study video X 2
• Continued Master Study - finished lay-in
• Ate quinoa and Artichokes
• Drew random stuff

And so on...  It is also my daily, monthly and yearly calendar all in one.  Tags are a sufficient way of organizing myself.  I can tag the days that I need to @meet someone, or when I have an #event to attend.  Tags are customized to whatever you put an @ or # symbol in front of.  I've started to use the tags #today1, #today2, and #today3 to list the things I want to do soon with priority listing.  1 being most important and 3 being something to do soon, but less soon than 2.  I also tag #today with no number for things I want to do every day, such as meditation.

It's also my organizer for everything else in my life, such as my art, writing and reading.  I read in a recent post by Austin Kleon, who I've borrowed the daily #log idea from, that some woman reads five books at once and connects what she gets from each of them to each other. So I added reading to my #today (daily) lists and started on five books at the same time.

I've organized my reading as follows.  These are the five books I've started reading, and I calculated how many pages I needed to read on a daily basis to get all the pages of each book read within two months.


Reading

• Frankenstein - 5 pages per day - done in 2 months (May 11th-July 11th) - 269 pages to go

• Read 5 pages #today *
• 
  

• Hard-Boiled Wonderland - 7 pages a day - done in 2 months (May 11th-July 11th) - 386 pages to go

• Read 7 pages - #today *
• 
  

• Super Mario - 5 pages a day - done in 2 months (May 11th - July 11th) - 291 pages to go

• Read 5 pages #today *
• 
  

• Swann's Way - 10 pages a day - done in 2 months (May 11th - July 11th) - 277 pages to go

• Read 10 pages #today *
• 
  

• Noble Eight-fold Path - 2 pages a day - done in 2 months (May 11th - July 11th) - 115 pages to go

• Read 2 pages #today *

It's nice to have to read only two pages on one book and have ten to read of another.  I think the diversity is going to prove useful in the consistent practice of reading this amount daily.  It's not much reading in a day.  It's enough to do without tiring yourself out or being overwhelmed by the amount of pages before you even look at a book.  Five books in two months for one year will be thirty books.  Not bad compared to my usual reading year.

You can see the #today tags there and the * next to it.  I've used the * to show myself when I have read my pages.  WorkFlowy has a cross off feature as the application is based on making lists and that is a very listy thing to do.  However, a * is simple enough for me to see that I've read today, and I will erase it before the next day's reading begins.  Small steps on a daily basis work best.

#sketch

"Paint what you love, want, 'what looks nice' and everything will fall into place."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

BY ANTHONY ROSS

A girl named Brandy's back at a bar the other night.  When people are watching other people talk, it's a great time to draw them.  It's also nice to show them when you're done, if it's any good (or even if it's not.)

What Calls on What Is

"What if what if's only confuses what we are?"
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

BY ANTHONY ROSS

Life at last was carried inward for the world to see, and breathe.  A mirror is what we all see.  A surrender.  A note on a piano: the tone jagged yet intrinsic in beauty.   What else could there be? 

Matter clings to memory.  In this concession, confusion arises. Swirled in between rocks of idealism or rejection and pressed upon is the image of inadequate iridescence.  Take the fire.  A fire rises and falls, shifts and turns and breaks away from its source.  What fire could behold its original source?  A spark, launched to be risen. Surrender, this spark amidst the great forces of the world, pushed by the air and taken by the wind.  Frozen by the wind.  Sparks disappear to the eye.  New sparks are born.  And fires go out.  All the time, shifting and changing.  Nothing lasts.

Don't doubt yourself young man.  You are a whispering of the eagles.  You are a speaking of the wind, of the land, of the trees. Anyone who approaches you will hear this calling, among other things.  They will be good to you, as you are to them.  Even if they are not, you will be of unchanging nature, for change is the nature. The nature is change, and anyone who befuddles and belittles existence in to terms of good or bad and conclusions on these principles will be sore-footed.

The environment is a consistency with man.  The two are not separate.  One does not see another out there and then set foot upon it like a door mat.  The setting is taken upon moment by moment, message by message and change by change.  Life is inconsistent in its consistency, or else it would not have consistency.  There must be stops and starts.  There must be sparks and then no sparks.  The idea of one being there for another is just that, an idea.  There is the whole.  There is not the linear.  What language and systems of thought apply to is the understanding of the linear construction of what appears to our understanding.  Such understanding is limited and such interpretations of understandings are limited.  They are not useless.  They are bound by definition.  Such things are very helpful to being a messenger of the world.  A sign poster of the world.  We can also make sign posts out of these sign posts, messages out of the messages.

Again and again we have fallen away from reality.  It takes a falling aback into it to be free.  How does on do that?  How does one fall into the ineffable?  A reality so untouched, unlabeled, un-bewildered by experimental interpretation, does not fall away.  It is just that we cannot meet it.  Yet, how do we meet it?  Is meeting it through an idea?  Is meeting it an idea we can have?  Meeting what?  Meeting what is.  'What is' is met upon knowing that it is not met.  We meet the unknowing upon knowing we don't know.  It is upon seeing the completeness of our incomplete description.  A valid one, but an invalid one for an entirety of change.  To describe the change in which has no contained form is a challenge that cannot be complete.  To complete it would be to achieve the impossible.

Our minds are just a stream in the ocean of life.  One stream can contain countless information.  It can break into new streams and change new streams into its own.  That is our sign post.  A most valuable one, yet the ocean is undivided in its wholeness.  Its complexities unfathomable and beyond thought.  Our own thought of its ocean-ness is less than.  We may never know if we've achieved this seeing of the ocean at all.  The 'if' is our achievement. It is our interpretation of possibility.  Possibility only comes from our defining of what is impossible.  Where can what we are, really, be the only thing?  Is it necessary to free oneself from the 'iffing' to see the natural Self?  What if what if's only confuses what we are? 

We are too simple to understand with a simple mind.  We are too natural to understand in organized thought, yet the understanding of our natural state is one that does not need words.  It is a full view of reality, unimpressed by anything and without direction of other than itself.  What is that?  Where does that live?  That life is all things.  All things is that life.  There is no thing that is not.  All things are.  All is, as is.  Are you with it?  What is with this?  What is this?  What is.

Noticed Motives

"We mustn't need to switch our motives before moving on."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

BY ANTHONY ROSS

What motives are there for entering into any endeavor?  Whether spiritual, practical, scientific, artistic, or any other label you could put upon an act of inquiry, the general motives are similar.  One can have a motive for achieving greatness in some aspect of that which he's acting upon.  What level of proficiency can I do this task with?  Another may be the simple playful observation of the task as it happens.  Often times this latter motive would provide the proficiency of the first.  This exploration broadens horizons and opens the field of what the motive might be.  Its motive is left undecided until further exploration.  The more opposite motive to exploring this would be the attitude of, "let's get this over with."

What might a person accomplish with the last motive?  They would walk from the end of the beach to the other end, if this was their task, without noticing a thing.  They may get there in proper time, or in sufficient timing if their goal of proficiency was to walk the path as fast as possible. Yet, the walk itself would be something of little value to them.  The motive, unintentional as it may be, was to get past the walk and basically ignore it completely. Therefore, no understanding of the path they walked will ever be retained, as the motive was to move on to what mattered more, namely, not the task at hand.  Here, the task at hand is not of concern, but the motive behind it.

A person with a conclusion as to what the point in mind is would likely miss the point.  With the two other motives mentioned before, understanding and attention must accompany them.  As said in the book, Mastery, which talks about the path, trials and exploration of mastering anything, the one who hurries will fall behind.  The most driven, work-a-holics burn themselves out.  This is because with that direction observation falls second to achievement.  Without detached observation, we likely will be blind to both our faults and our successes.  To add to that, we'd likely dismiss those as being something they're not.  Trying to one-up ourselves with each effort is like seeing the end of the beach without the walking that takes place from start to finish.  Even when walked, with one eye at the end, what appreciation of the process would be acquired?  At least we see the end of the beach before moving on to the next task, with this motive, and don't miss the entire thing.

The motive of play is a motive of noticing.  It's where we are not simply passing by, but dancing with the happening that's in play.  The energy embodied in this kind of act is attention.  It is also fully encompassing, filled up by itself.  The walk doesn't need to be done for the purpose to be achieved.  The path of Mastery is one of containment as a whole, with the process resulting in the result within it's happening.  The sense of this, how we are to play, is subtle.  It is a way of being that emanates liveliness of the moment.  If we could always play games, our lives would feel this kind of motive and every act would be an inspiration to continue on moving in a fun, ever-new dance.

That being said, this does not mean that our tasks will be always sufficiently in play.  To aim to achieve this is carrying the motivation that we ought to proficiently play.  It's thinking that we HAVE to play, which causes a double-bind.  The motives we carry will often change.  This is most definitely because our motive for our motives is something we are still playing with.  We can play with the motives we have now, whatever they may be.  We mustn't need to switch our motives before moving on.  That would be avoiding the task at hand, which is the walk we're on.  This would compartmentalize our way of seeing too much and we would essentially be missing the point.  The point is subtle and profound.  Noticing where you are is a game to live.  Its motive?  Well, look.

The Answer at Hand and Foot

"Without the end of your life in mind, you came in quite naturally."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

BY ANTHONY ROSS

How do we live?  What is a life?  Such simple questions are the mirrors to an infinite number of complexities and variations.  Is it possible to say everything about this in a blog post?  Am I pompous enough to know the answer, while I'm alive and in living life, let alone to write it in less than ten paragraphs?  The answer is yes, because the answer is forthcoming.

The answer is already at hand!  Nobody can answer that, and so we've got it.  There is no discussion needed, though there always seems to be discussion from angst and conceptualization of what it is about and how we can make it better, or how it is worse. Imagine a baby, being born.  However many months later, it's walking on two feet.  The parents say, "Well done child.  You execute your walking with promise.  Keep practicing, and one day you can get paid for walking so well.  Then, when you are making money at your walking, your life will be well.  Yet, you can always make more.  Just keep at it, and you'll really get somewhere.  Walk more and you'll get there faster."

This is agreeably ridiculous.  Yet, how often our questions arise of, "What am I doing with my life?  Am I doing the right things?  Am I heading in the right direction?"  You were born without direction.  Without the end of your life in mind, you came in quite naturally.  Then the thoughts come in to try to get to the top of life before the end comes.  It's a linear thought process that was adopted with the influence of all those other directions, pushing and pulling. It's not about going from stage to stage to stage in a linear manner, but a sparkling dance of jazz music jamming with itself, as Alan Watts might put it.

A baby awakens into a flux and flow of life.  They come to understanding the variations and complexities around them, but over time grind these subtle nuances of perception into a very obtuse and narrow mindset of what direction they are taking things and what direction they think they should take them, usually based on what others conclude about their life.  Their digging and clear responding of what is is effectively wiped out and only comes back in the certain moments of clarity that anyone gets, no matter how confused, with good fortune.  These moments are the ones that we should be after, but they are also the moments that are the subtlest, and thus the understanding of how to 'reach,' or better said, 'read' them is unfamiliar, though not unattainable through the right viewing.

The right viewing really is the best moment itself, never mind the circumstances.  All circumstances are responded to the way that they 'should' be, when they are seen correctly.  What is seeing correctly?  It is seeing without the fragmented self.  Seeing without the ideas of, 'many months later, this will be helpful to me,' or, 'because I'm doing this, my problem will be solved.' Wanting to fix 'this thing' doesn't fix it.  Both of those are ideas that bring us away from the answer at hand.  Life is, and any complexity that it has is only a sparkling piece of the on going music.  Any conclusions we have on it are from the past and usually based in a mirror that is throwing a lot of unnecessary complexities into the present, because our viewing is skewed.

What is the question?  The question is 'What is the question?'  Is it so hard to act with what the seeing is, to have perception match response? What would we do if everyone treated their life with attention and care?  The next step would be to do what is needed to be done, without an idea of it.  What is that?  Don't ask.  Attend.  Yet, nobody needs to say it.  It has to be, and such an answer will be.  In attention, there may still be the questions of difficult verbal response, such as, "What is a living?"  This question's answer might not even be there, in words, but it will be perceived.  The following is a poem re-discovered in my notes that relates to this.

I keep thinking, "What's in the words?"

And so I never look, but I can see.

Looking is a notion in itself.

I can see.

There is nothing blocking it.

All is as it is.

This is the experience that is required to be in this moment.  This is the perfect experience to experience in the way I am experiencing it.  The experiencing of it is expanding into many more experiences and explanations within it.  The only rule for this function is seeing.

A baby doesn't need an explanation for it.  They're sitting with it; the stuff of it.  Such is the intention I see behind Rilke's words:

I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.  Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is to live everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will                           gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

Applying A Wakening Vision

"Have the vision and know to be honest with how much you're applying yourself in its wake."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

BY ANTHONY ROSS

How we define wake on Google is:

verb

1. 1.

   emerge or cause to emerge from a state of sleep; stop sleeping.

   "she woke up feeling better"

In the 'New' Lexicon Webster's Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language, it provides such synonyms for wake as:

activate, animated, arouse, awake, awaken, call, enkindle, excite, kindle, prod, revive, rouse, stimulate, stir and of course wake.

So it is that the English language repeats itself.  In the provided Google example, "she woke up feeling better," it could be implied that her waking up activated, animated, revived and excited her, and so she felt better.  It could simply be said, "she woke up," and in using the verb waking, we could assume all its synonyms apply.

Yet, we don't always wake up animated, excited, enkindled with liveliness.  Why is that?  When the body's resting, it should be rested upon waking, surely.  Is the mind resting too?  A more difficult question to answer, though fairly obvious at the same time.  The states we revive within us, whether we remember them or they come to happen of spontaneous manner, are the states that we live.

Having a vision of the way you want to go about your life can be helpful.  It doesn't mean that you are stuck to this idea.  You use it as a spring board to propel yourself whenever the application of your faculties ceases to inspire you.  Have the vision and know to be honest with how much you're applying yourself in its wake.

We want to fashion our thoughts to fruitful efforts, and direct our energy with intelligence.  Being able to imagine yourself at the end of the line may be an easier way to start walking.  You may not get to that end result any quicker, which will be different than you can picture it anyway.  With a vision, you can encourage yourself to continue on the path.  The path is our greatest joy.  It is the state we live.  To get behind on the path or to rush forward is part of that same path.  It is the present one, the one who is awake, that will see these things and walk fruitfully with an ever-adapting vision. Ultimately, it's how you apply yourself.

Remember Nature's Harmony

"When we begin to come back towards our recalling of this, we remember the best of ourselves."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

BY ANTHONY ROSS

In The Art Spirit by Robert Henri, we are reminded again that we must remember.  We must be kind to ourselves, for we are telling tales through our lives that have never been told.  Each breath is a life, arising and passing away.  Where are we taught to live in line with these laws of impermanence and harmony?  Only in nature, it would seem.

These laws are something that man has to remember at first, unlike the animal which is in harmony as it must be.  Man, or human beings, have to water this memory until it grows from a tiny flower into a beautiful tree with thick roots and thick branches.  He must recall these laws in his mind again and again until there is no action through himself that is contrary to these principles in each breath and each life he embodies.

Without being taught, how does one remember these laws?  They are not laws that we 'forget' in the sense of forgetting to have them work as they should.  The laws are principles of nature.  We did not create them, but we abide by them.  If a man is clumsy in his undertakings and did not abide to these laws, his actions would be those that are not in harmony with the law of arising and passing away.  Therefore, these actions would be naturally narrow and ultimately frivolous.

A man may know these laws with the intellect.  He may see the tree and its leaves fall.  He may see the snow rise on the ground and melt in the spring, or the sun alive for the season of summer.  Either way, his insights are not something he carries at the root of his being. Rather, a view of it being outside himself will arrest any development of this principle within himself.  When I say development, I again don't mean that he makes these laws work.  He must work as they do in order to live these laws, to live them in the next step of remembering.

Remembering is a gathering principle.  Re-member.  Anyone who enrolls in a membership in a principle that is not conducive to a relationship with nature and the nature of change within himself, will be lost.  They would feel that they are alien to the environment they inhabit.  To feel that way about the outer world is one thing, but to feel the same with the body itself would amount to tremendous confusion.  To return to Robert Henri, we must be prepared at any moment with the total readiness of all our faculties. The highest of these faculties is a quality and understanding of our own physical nature at the physical bodily level. This is the root level of our being, and only seeing it in the world outside this body is no attempt at applying these principles.

When we begin to come back towards our recalling of this, we remember the best of ourselves.  Yet, we know this not in ideas that are beyond us, but as an intrinsic development of who we are as human beings.  Each one of us, an essence of nature as complex as the ocean.  Signs on the path of excellency are what we must carry with us, as extensions of ourselves to continue finding new signs, implicit within our transforming, changing existence.  Always ready for an absolute transformation of all that we are, yet never taking a step beyond the place which we are.  Never stepping further than needed, we float on, moving ever more gracefully to discover new signs of life.